The NYU Sustainability Task Force has released its first annual Environmental Assessment, a document which includes reports, evaluations, and recommendations about NYUs environmental impact.

The environmental assessment is part of the universitys effort to gauge and improve the impact of university operations on the environment. As part of the NYU Green Action Plan, the assessment reviews NYUs impact in a variety of snapshots. These categories include: energy use, landfill and recycled waste, water use, transportation, procurement and food, and a section of cross-sector analysis evaluating buildings and land use, student involvement in greening efforts, and climate change.

Clearly define environmental problems, in order to facilitate development of specific, targeted projects and interventions that address them.

Enable prioritization among these interventions, given the limited time, energy and resources that can be brought to bear.

Facilitate more efficient use of energy, water and other resources. /Save money, achieving administrative cost savings that can support other needs.

Enable evaluation of the effectiveness of current green initiatives, policies and programs, and revise them if a course-correction is needed.

Observe trends and changes over time.

To complete the assessment, Sustainability Initiative staff and volunteers contacted and worked with dozens of offices and administrators throughout the university to assemble, collate, and analyze data.

The report offers a snapshot of the variety and scope of institutional data available for the baseline 2006-2007 fiscal year (FY2007), as well as a detailed categorical analysis of those data and their implications. Some of this data is useful on a macro scale, as a means of identifying campus-wide trends (e.g. an overall increase or decrease in energy use over time), while other, more granular data enables analysis on a more focused micro scale, as a means of targeting specific effective interventions (e.g. the impact of a lighting retrofit project on the energy consumption of an individual building).

NYUs Sustainability Task Force is an advisory body composed of students, faculty, administrators, and staff, who develop recommendations for new policies and practices that advance NYUs long-term future as a sustainable university. For more information on the Sustainability Task Force, please go to http://www.nyu.edu/sustainability